Nope

 

Notwithstanding the spectacle of the low-concept, high-suction flying saucer attack, the guts of this film lies in the title.

The “Nope” is first heard when OJ and Emerald note that everyone knows who made the very first film: white guy Edward Muybridge. But does anyone know who rode the horse in that film? There Muybridge sought to determine if a running horse leaves the ground. That man was black so of course: “Nope.” OJ repeats the word when he refuses to surrender to the invasion, to give up.

It’s writer/director Jordan Peele’s film mission to say “Nope” to the American tradition of marginalizing or omitting the African American from its history, values, consciousness. As in Get Out (2017) and Us (2019) he inflects the familiar genres by centering on the black experience and reversing its traditional suppression. Because he’s liberating a long vilified -- hence frightening -- force he naturally works in the horror genres, whether Monster or Sci-Fi.

As Emerald points out, “Since the moment pictures could move, we had skin in the game.” Not just in the pictures, but throughout the fabric of American life — where permitted. The skin in their game was black so outre.

The Hollywood horse-training family supposedly descends from Muybridge’s unnamed rider. It names the unnamed and empowers the suppressed with a history.

This film is especially self-referential in the number of references to film-making. That is explicit in the opening scene and in the later attempts to film the outer space phenomenon. Jupe Park’s pitch for his neo-Western live entertainment show promises to transform the spectator by providing a manufactured new background. Though not in his intended way, it does — elimination. Kara Hagedorn reads Emerald's name as evoking the green screen by which film provides its performers with a literally different background.  

Indeed the theme is introduced in the Biblical epigraph:"Nahum 3:6: I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle." That could reflect upon the white’s oppression of the Black. And as film is the predominant spectacle of our age, if not our predominant filth, it is the proper field for rebuttal.

In the alien monster’s final attack the saucer is replaced by a flowery shape (more Georgia O’Keeffe than Melies) that keeps erupting into cinema-screen rectangles. Here again, films beget films. Emerald triumphs by feeding that creature a huge balloon winking Fat Boy — that she fatally explodes. As historic lies and myths eventually must.

The palimpsest narrative includes flashbacks to the TV sitcom that Jupe Park created and starred in as a lad. It also summons Peele’s own background in TV sitcoms, before he found his satiric voice in sketch TV. In this sequence the tamed chimp center of the TV series runs amok and slaughters the show “parents.” Figure Cheetah bloodily offing Ozzie and Harriet. 

That apparent tangent actually parallels the major plotline. Given the traditional racist equation of African American with monkey, the sitcom comic butt's revolt replays OJ’s and Emerald’s reversal of the reduction of the Black experience in American history and mythology. The sitcom family has treated their black pet as a comic tool. Its murderous revolt suggests the racist terror that underlies that attempt to diminish the Other.

Similarly, in naming his hero OJ, Peele provides a precise antithesis to the OJ we immediately recall. That’s the Simpson who was the college, NFL and Hollywood House N-word, who beat a murder rap, vowing to pursue his wife’s killer through every golf course in the land, and was finally jailed for the armed theft of — what else? — OJ memorabilia. Talk about self-referentiality. 

        Peele replaces that OJ in our consciousness with a reticent, courageous, shy, noble, generous and sensitive servant both to horse and to humanity, to art and to life. This OJ rides a real Bronco with stakes even higher than his forerunner's famed slow-mo TV chase. Hence perhaps the key in the horse's flank -- ignition for the parallel. In humanity, principle  and efficacy Peele's OJ ranks second here only to his sister, Emerald. In her character gender as well as race are freshly empowered.

In short, the titular “Nope” is a firm denial of the American abuse. neglect and denial of the Black experience. The heavenly sci-fi playground makes it a true (apres Melville) “No, in Thunder!”                         Guess Nope too springs eternal in the human breast.